Tuesday's victory still standout for Leyland

DETROIT — When you’ve managed in 1,271 big league games, and many more in the minors, it’s hard for one game to stick out of the crowd.

For Tigers manager Jim Leyland, that standout game would be Tuesday’s come-from-behind, walk-off victory over the Oakland A’s.

“That will go down as one of my favorite wins of all time,” Leyland said one afternoon later, before the Tigers opened their three-game weekend series against the Indians on Friday. “That was exciting. Didn’t look too good for the home team. A lot of people left happy. A lot of people left and said they didn’t leave.”

With Miguel Cabrera out of the game with an aggravation of his abdominal strain, the Tigers rallied to score four runs off A’s closer Grant Balfour in the ninth, finishing off a comeback from five runs down, the biggest deficit they’ve erased this season.

Advertisement

Torii Hunter’s three-run home run completed the walk-off win.

What made it so special for Leyland?

“The way we got our (butt) kicked for three days, and it looked like we were going to get our (butt) kicked again. I think that says a lot for your team, when you just got your fanny beat. You could’ve just said ‘You know what? It just wasn’t our four days. They’re hot, and they just whipped our fanny. We’ll take our beating, and try to get ready for Cleveland.’ But they didn’t do that. They hung in there, and played it out. Played nine innings, and pulled a game out we probably shouldn’t have won,” the manager said.

“That was a very impressive game to me.

“You can always tell, too, on the bench, guys are into it. Nobody gave up. Nobody didn’t think we had a chance. Pretty impressive.”

Just one night earlier, the Tigers found themselves in exactly the opposite situation, trailing the A’s at one point 14-1 in what would end up a 10-run loss.

“People ... have a tendency to think when you’re getting beat you’re not trying hard, not working hard. Doesn’t work like that. When you got 14-to-whatever-it-was, 20-some hits in the eighth inning, there wasn’t anybody on the bench that thought we were going to come back and win. Including me,” Leyland said.

“We knew the game was over. But it doesn’t mean we don’t care. It just means common sense prevailed. It’s 14-1. ... If we’re not sitting in there rah-rahing, don’t take offense. We got the (crap) beat out of us, and it was time to go home.

“There are times, every once in a while, when you say ‘Uncle.’ That’s legal.”

The Tigers just didn’t do that Thursday, and it made a world of difference for the mood of the clubhouse. It even made a dent in the mood of the coaching staff, which went out for a round of golf afterward.

“We went and played nine holes after that. I must’ve still been excited, because Id didn’t play too well,” Leyland said. “It made for a nicer evening, I’ll say that. It made ... the little relaxation time a lot more fun, I’ll say that. We get excited. That’s all part of it.”

But that doesn’t last long in the big leagues. No emotion ever does.

“That’s the nice thing about baseball. In one way, it’s a nice thing, in the other way, it’s a tough thing. If you win a big game as an NFL team, you get the whole week to enjoy it, even though you’re preparing for the (next). You don’t come right back the next day, you have to wait. If you love a tough game, you have to wait for a week,” Leyland said.

“Here, you don’t.”

So which feeling lingers longer — good vibes from a big win, or bad ones from a tough loss?

“Well, that’s a good question. You hate to say this, but you almost kind of become immune to both of them, because you know you’ve got a job the next day. You have fun with a great win, you have a tough time with a tough loss, but you almost become immune to it.”

Hunter helps out

Normally, when a veteran gets a day off, like Torii Hunter did for Thursday’s day game, he has it off.

“I never really liked that. A day off is supposed to be a day off, but it’s kind of an unwritten rule that if you have a chance to win the game, or if somebody else gets hurt, you have to go in. That’s just the way it is. Torii, he’s great about stuff like that,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said.

“There have been players I’ve managed over the years — fortunately not too many — if they got a day off, they wanted the day off. They didn’t want you to put them into the game.”

Turns out the Tigers needed him, and he delivered, pinch hitting in the seventh, then coming around again to deliver the game-winning hit in the ninth, with his three-run home run.

He’s done that a bit in his first season as a Tiger, getting tabbed as a pinch hitter in five different games, and coming through with a hit once. He’s better when he’s been put in as a substitute, or gets a second at-bat after pinch hitting, going 2-for-3 with an RBI before Thursday’s home run.

“We always kid him about ‘Be in the hole today, in case I need you,’ ” Leyland said.

The Tigers probably would’ve needed a pitcher to come through in something other than a pitching role, too, had Hunter merely tied it, not won it.

“Yesterday would’ve been the first day since I’ve been here, in an American League game, that I’d have had to hit the pitcher, if we’d have kept going. Because I’d have put my DH, Iglesias, into the game,” Leyland said.

“It’s no more than what you have to do to win the game. We’ll use everybody, and we’re trying to win the game. Fortunately, we did.”

Tuiasosopo makes play at 3B

One of the switches that got overlooked in Thursday’s game was Matt Tuiasosopo making a key play at third base in the ninth inning. He’d entered the game when Miguel Cabrera left with an injury in the fifth inning, but in left field, with Don Kelly taking over at third. When Hunter hit for Kelly in the seventh, that forced Tuiasosopo to slide over to third for the first time since spring training.

No problem.

The versatile Tuiasosopo — who played a lot of infield during the spring, considering the Tigers’ glut of outfielders, and key infielders on hiatus for the World Baseball Classic — made the only play he needed to. He fielded Josh Donaldson’s grounder cleanly, and threw to second to force the lead runner. Had he not, the runner would’ve scored on Jed Lowrie’s ensuing single, allowing the A’s to expand their lead to 7-3.

“There was one amazing thing to me about yesterday’s game that never got mentioned. It could’ve turned out to be the biggest thing in the game,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. “The play that Tuiasosopo made. It would’ve been second and third and maybe another run in, and it never got mentioned hardly. That play saved that game. Or they’d have probably had more runs.”

Matthew B. Mowery covers the Tigers for Digital First Media. Read his “Out of Left Field” blog at opoutofleftfield.blogspot.com.